Forged In Fire
Hosted by Nate Pharmer-Eden and Cole Farrell, Forged In Fire is where real entrepreneurship meets raw, unfiltered stories. This isn’t your typical business podcast—we skip the fluff and dive straight into the heat of what it really takes to build, run, and grow a business. From late-night doubts to game-changing wins, we explore the trials, setbacks, and breakthroughs that entrepreneurs experience at every stage of their journey.
Whether you’re a seasoned business owner navigating new challenges or someone with a burning desire to launch your first venture, this podcast offers powerful insights and practical lessons for everyone. No sugarcoating—just honest conversations about what it takes to forge success through the fire.
Get ready to be inspired, learn from real-world struggles, and gain the tools you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. This is your front-row seat to the highs, lows, and everything in between. Are you ready to step into the fire? 🔥
Forged In Fire
Episode 39: Behind the scenes of fraud detection, Shane Pogue reveals how he protects investors from bad actors.
What happens when someone with investigative skills meets the investment world? You get a powerful tool for protecting individual investors from fraud. Shane, founder of Aegis RSI, brings institutional-level due diligence down to earth for everyday investors.
Shane's journey began in an unexpected place. Originally pursuing a career in law enforcement, a heart condition discovered during military service forced him to pivot. After working as a private investigator, he found himself at Fidelity Investments during the pandemic, where he discovered his true calling in the due diligence department. What he missed, however, was helping individual people directly – something he now does every day through his own venture.
The distinction between background checks and due diligence investigations becomes crystal clear as Shane walks us through his process. While background checks merely verify criminal records, Shane's investigations unravel complex business structures, verify property sales, analyze operational performance, and identify potential red flags in investment opportunities. In one eye-opening example, he discovered a business owner who had used loan money to purchase a private jet – information uncovered through Federal Aviation Administration records.
Timing matters enormously in this work. As Shane explains, investors should engage due diligence services early in their process – after initial interest but before significant time investment. This prevents the all-too-common scenario where investors have already committed substantial time to a deal before discovering fatal flaws. The reports his firm produces don't tell clients whether to invest or not (that would cross into financial advisor territory), but rather clearly outline the risks involved so investors can make truly informed decisions.
For aspiring entrepreneurs, Shane's business-building experience offers valuable lessons. His growth came through persistent social media engagement, personalized connection requests rather than sales pitches, and consistent content creation – even when it felt like "talking to an empty room." His advice: do proper market research, persist even when progress seems slow, prioritize self-care, and learn to delegate lower-value tasks.
Want to protect your investments from fraud? Connect with Shane on LinkedIn or visit HSRSI.com to learn how proper due diligence can save you from costly investment mistakes.
Forget what you've heard. Forged in Fire is where real entrepreneurs come to share the untold truths of success the late nights, the crushing setbacks, the moments that change everything. No fluff, just fire, ready to step into the heat and unlock what it really takes to build a business. This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of Forged in Fire. I am your co-host, nate Farmer. Allow me to introduce my counterpart, cole. Come on stage, brother. How we doing man nate.
Speaker 3:How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good dude, I'm fired up. This is honestly our very first time that I can think of that. We've had back to back to back podcast guests all been a hit like the entire day, like we usually do, maybe one or two week, but like this has been three people all bringing the fire, all bringing the heat dude. So I'm fired up, man, because it gives me energy and it keeps me going. But what about you?
Speaker 3:Dude, I'm with you. They've been great, and I'm super excited because whenever we have these interviews with people, I feel like I get so amped up as well, and it motivates me, it teaches me. So it's exciting to be here and, again, I'm always excited for the guests that we have on, today especially, so I want to get into that. However, one thing, as I say on every episode, and for the third time today guys, please leave us a review as the one favor for helping us grow. This is the only thing that really matters to us and that's what helps us continue to do this. So, if you could, please leave us a review, comments, wherever it is, whatever platform you're on. We would really, really appreciate it. So, with that said, sit back, relax, enjoy the show, dude, it's going to be so good.
Speaker 2:Today we're going to be joined by Shane, but before we bring him on stage, I met this amazing man. Must have been oh a couple of weeks now, maybe about a month ago or so. Actually, if you guys remember the episode that we had with Linda Holtz, from Married to Real Estate and we talked about that, she has a meetup every Thursday and I met Shane through the meetup that I was attending. It's a virtual meetup, so, again, shout out to her Definitely, try to dive in, Definitely try to meet us there. It's an amazing opportunity, but Shane has been phenomenal. Aegis RSI was founded in 2024, and he helps syndicators and folks in that industry to be able to do background checks and screenings. But, honestly, it sounds like I'm just babbling because I don't have a lot of detail on how it works. So enough from me. Let's go ahead and bring Shane on. Shane, how are we doing today, man?
Speaker 4:I am doing absolutely great Thanks for having me on Nate and Cole. I am doing absolutely great Thanks for having me on Nate and Cole. Yeah, so I'm just going to dive in a little bit to what I do so that we can clarify it a bit. So what I do is actually not a background screening, it's something a little bit more advanced. It's known as a due diligence investigation. So basically, this isn't something like fancy or new that's never been heard from before. This is just a tool that bigger companies like institutional investors use to vet new investments, potential partners and vendors. And I used to do that same thing for institutional investors and I just brought it down to the level where I could help individuals as well.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love it, I love it, I love it. So please tell us more, give us a little bit more context and kind of what got you here? What brought you here? Man, take us back as far as you would like to go into how you got into this kind of field and line of work.
Speaker 4:Well, it's actually a really long story and it doesn't really have a great beginning where it's just like, wow, that's such an inspiring beginning. So most people I meet when they're like oh, I want to be a police officer, I want to be in law enforcement, which is what I wanted to do. They started very early in life. They started when they're a kid. I didn't realize I even had an interest in that until I was in college and I was actually going for a more traditional science degree and realized that after taking, like a criminal, an intro to criminal justice course, I really liked it. That after taking, like a criminal, an intro to criminal justice courts, I really liked it, so went that route, got that's what I got my degree in. I also got a certificate in criminalistics, which all that means is if you speak forensic science type stuff to me, I won't get confused. I know what you're talking about. Had to take some really crazy classes that were way outside of my like intellectual wheelhouse doing it, but it was honestly a great experience. Was working on becoming a police officer here in Texas and was in the pipeline for Dallas PD. No offense against Dallas PD, absolutely love the people there, but it was not my preferred first choice. I wanted to go to like a smaller pd first and then kind of build up to the bigger stuff. Um was just trying to get in there and I actually got.
Speaker 4:Had a really interesting conversation with an army recruiter and he went and said hey, we have this new pilot program. If you have a degree and you join the and you enlist in the army, you can become a criminal investigation division agent right off the bat. So for me, going from I want to be a police officer, but there's a lot of hiring freezes in Texas to hey, you can be a special agent in the army. That was a really attractive thing for me. So I went and started doing that, got really sick, had no one, had any idea what was going on. I would just like be standing in formation, sometimes pass out. We'd be doing, uh, push-ups, I'd pass out, and then drill sergeant come over like poke me with stick. Couldn't figure out what was happening for a while. Turns out I have a heart condition that really only activates under stress. Um, no one I had never detected at any point in my life, and not even the military entrance. Uh, people could detect it. So I had to get discharged from that.
Speaker 4:Immediately after that I started working as a pi. Um, love that job, really tough work, though. Honestly, nothing but respect for the people that do that day to day, because it is a lot um, and there's so much that goes into it that people just don't think about. But during the pandemic, uh, the pi firm I work was working for, they kind of shut down a little bit and they were like drastically decreasing. They kept on staff because there was no demand for it. Right then, um, within a week or two, I got a call from Fidelity Investments and I had never thought about going into the finance world with my skills at all.
Speaker 4:It was just not something I considered, because you never hear about that type of thing Started working with their background department and then moved over to their due diligence department, and that's where I really kind of found my niche, where I was like, okay, yeah, I know I can use my skills here. I can do some great stuff. Uh, the only thing I was really missing while I was working with fidelity is helping people day in, day out, because, of course, I'm helping the company and I'm helping my co-workers and I'm helping anyone I can, but we don't see those individual people that you help. You don't see the cases I get now where I'm like, hey, I'm helping this lady that she's just saving for retirement she's got quite a bit of money there but she just wants to vet a financial advisor to make sure he's not going to screw her over, and it's just one of those things. When I started doing it by myself, I was like this is absolutely what I want to do.
Speaker 4:So yeah, that's a quick version of my story what I want to do.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's a quick version of my story. That's awesome. I usually follow this up with why, and you answered that absolutely perfectly. So I guess my next question is just going to be as you went through that journey, I guess more specifically on the journey with your current path, not so much the past, but what are challenges that you ran into with building it and bringing that product to the consumer? What are things that went well, maybe, but what are challenges that you ran into with building it and bringing that product to the consumer? What are things that went well, maybe, and what are things that you didn't expect that didn't go well?
Speaker 4:Ooh there are a lot for both of those. So one of the things that went really well that I did not expect is people. Once I was able to describe what I did to people and most people I talked to they're individual investors, so they don't really know what I'm talking about right off the bat.
Speaker 4:They're like oh, so you're doing like background checks and I have to kind of explain to them no, it's not really a background check, something completely different, it's like an anti-fraud tool. You're not background checking them, you're do. It's like some of the stuff I do is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3:You would never what it is exactly so if somebody's listening, going like wait, I hear you, but what exactly does it entail?
Speaker 4:Okay. So one of the really big things that we do is, for example, real estate syndicators. They have a lot involved in what they do on the day-to-day. They'll have multiple LLCs associated with them through their main business. They'll have multiple LLCs associated with properties. They'll have this whole crazy business structure that you have to unravel before you can even begin to try to vet them. And if you were doing a background check, you would never even try that. You'd get the name and run that and then, oh, this guy's never had any criminal records or civil records. You're good, right. What we do is more on the risk management and analysis side as well. So we'll go through every single one of those LLCs, if we can identify them and look through and go, hey, is there anything against this LLC? This guy runs a hotel property in this county. How's that hotel property actually doing? What are the reviews on that hotel saying? Do they have any operational issues? What are the county records say?
Speaker 4:If they sold, if they, for example, were doing like a five-year syndication, they said, hey, we sold it for this price. Well, did they actually sell it for that price? Let's go in and dive in and make sure that they're doing what they're saying they're doing. So it's just like a very intense process that is basically verifying everything these people are saying about themselves. Now we don't go, of course. It would be absolutely crazy if, for some of these syndicators go through every single property they've ever sold. Usually we do kind of like a sampling type thing. We'll look for any reported issues. So like if the media reported that, hey, this portfolio area is underperforming, like sunbelt or something, we'll actually look at the um, their properties in the sunbelt area. If they say, hey, this specific property is having challenges, or during our research, something else indicates that it might be having challenges, we'll go for that property rather than one that might be doing well.
Speaker 4:We will try to actually include ones that are doing well, to just let them know, hey, it's not all bad, you don't. It's not ever all bad. Sometimes they just have struggling properties and you want to provide a balanced approach because, at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to go in and say, hey, this guy's a bad guy, you shouldn't do business with him because three of his properties underperforming. We're actually trying to sit there and make sure that you get unbiased information that you can use to make informed decisions about whether or not you want to invest with this guy, or even, in some cases, just you want to be their business partner. Or, in cases where they have multiple business lines, maybe even they have a service that you want to use and you want to use them as a vendor in some cases.
Speaker 2:This is so good. So this is like it reminds me of like literally, I was reading a book about it like a bad actor, like being able to make sure and identify and then being able to screen a little bit. So can you talk a little bit more let's sort of take it a little bit more in depth on what are those courses of action look like. So let's say somebody comes in, they decide to partner with you or they say, hey, shane, this is what I'm thinking of pursuing from let's just take an LP perspective and say, hey, I want to work with this operator you're pursuing from let's just take an LP's perspective and say, hey, I want to work with this operator, let me know what comes up.
Speaker 2:And then you find things you do the deep dive in. And then when you go back to them and you sit down with them, what does that process then? Look like you just say, hey, here's the information that you requested. Do you sit down with them and say, analyze different paths that they can take and say, hey, these might be red flags, but you might just want to ask a little bit more questions about this for a little bit more of a clear perspective, or how does that process then transpire? And if you want to use an example of maybe some of your old cases as well, that's awesome. You don't have to use any names. I understand confidentiality, but fill us in on what that process then looks like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so actually it's exactly like the second one. I don't. I'm not a financial advisor, first off, never one to misidentify myself. All I do is help people manage the risk of investing in certain things. So when someone looks at this pro that we go through our whole report, we issue the report and we say, hey, we found this and this. This could be an indicator of fraud or something we're actually going to go through them with them on.
Speaker 4:Usually we call them risk review calls. They don't typically take very long, but we don't have a time limit on them and we'll actually sit with them and explain what we found and why that could be an issue.
Speaker 4:Clients don't always request them, it's just because our reports are very thorough and sometimes they just read the reports and they're like we're good to go, but yeah, we'll sit there with you and make sure that you understand all the risks involved before you like we're good to go, but yeah, we'll sit there with you and make sure that you understand all the risks involved before you invest. So we're not saying hey, don't invest with this guy because we think it's a high risk deal. We just explain the risks involved Because, of course, if you said don't invest with them, you're actually delving into the areas of a financial advisor. I'm not telling you, hey, don't invest with this guy. I'm telling you, hey, I'm seeing some issues here.
Speaker 3:That makes sense. So would it be along the lines of let's use a fun story. Let's say we're investing with Joe Schmo and it seemed like Joe Schmo murdered his neighbors and buried them in the backyard and you found things that looked like that? You would assume be like hey, I'm not sure, not saying you should do or not do this deal. However, here's some interesting information. Is that kind of what it would go like?
Speaker 4:Yes, it's much more like that. Usually what we find is occasionally we do find like smoking guns, like in one case we were working on this I'm trying to change the case in my mind so I don't out anyone so we were lurking. It was more towards lending, but it was kind of like a business partnership type deal where this guy had gotten a really, really big loan from someone we were working with and we looked into where the money was going. Um, this happens all the time. By the way, this is not like where people will just money will kind of disappear and they come to me and they're like hey, this guy is saying he's having trouble making payments on this loan, that I helped him get Looked through a whole bunch of data and one of the really odd sources I actually found where part of the money had gone was with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Speaker 4:So if you didn't know, usually if you don't have like one of those subscription services where you get the private jets which is actually kind of messing up that line of investigation a little bit but you actually have to register a private jet if it's under your name.
Speaker 4:So if you, for example, you can actually find a jet registered at someone's home address through there and we found people using that before and it wasn't like one of the.
Speaker 4:It wasn't like a horror story like 2 million, but it was enough to raise red flags and we were like, why are you buying a jet when you just had to take out a business loan? We're not sure what's happening here. So that's one of those things where we say, hey, we don't know where all the money went, but we definitely see him buying this plane here and it's registered at his home address. So you might want to look into it or ask him questions about that if you want to continue with the relationship, because of course, when there's a loan involved involved, it's a completely different situation. The, the person, the person that you got the loan from, is not going to let you just back out. You're going to have to try to salvage that relationship in some way or the other. You might be able to work with the lender to kind of take some responsibility off of you, but at the end of the day they're going to get their money back somehow.
Speaker 3:so you gotta be very careful with that that's so interesting wait, quick follow-up up question that I'm not asking for specifics, but just like, how do you track in general, like something like where the money flows, like what, what are you trying to look at? And I'm more just curious, like I'm just curious. I guess I don't know if you can answer that or not.
Speaker 4:Um, it's very difficult. Some people people love to say like, hey, go follow the money. But actually following the money if you're trying to do a discreet investigation, is really, really hard. I have a contact that does financial due diligence, and how he does it's actually really cool he does. He literally links the lender or the investor's portal to his website with the bank account of the person they're investing with or lending to so he can see in real time if they're moving a lot of money or what they're doing.
Speaker 4:But when you're doing it from a discrete perspective and you don't have that arrangement, one of the things you have to do is look for significant issues. So you have to look for, like liens, judgments, you have to look for foreclosures, bankruptcy, basically any time where money is being moved or not put in the correct place. You want to note it because you can say, hey, this might not be an indicator of actual of where the money's actually going, but it does is an indicator of financial stress. So sometimes we'll see in the uh world of real estate investors just an entire like a freaking mountain of mechanics liens on a property and when we don't see a lawsuit tied to that mechanics lien, that's actually a problem because, yeah, mechanics can be filed pretty easily and sometimes it's a legitimate disagreement on the quality of work. Like we had one where the it was a flooring company and the floor was already peeling up months after, like a couple months after they installed it. So of course that's an issue with the quality of work. But we were able to find that actual lawsuit and type back to the lien so that we could lower the risk involved in the lien. We say, hey, if there was no lawsuit, there was no issue with the quality of work.
Speaker 4:It's kind of like a medium risk. There's no issue with the quality of work. It's kind of like a medium risk situation because like, hey, there's a lien here and it's a big lien, but also we know that's for flooring. But if we see that civil lawsuit, it's a low risk situation because we know there's an actual issue with the quality of work.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know for sure, but we have a suspicion because most people don't just kind of sue a person just for fun. There are a couple of people, but we also have a whole nother category of risks attributed to people like that that just seem to sue all their business partners and courts do too, by the way. So when you just constantly sue people, you're called a litigious individual and you can actually get lawsuits thrown out of court just by being marked that. But when we see that and you're suing all these business partners, of course we want to make sure that if someone's trying to partner with them as a business, we know about that as well, so that we can be like, hey, yeah, they tend to sue their business partners, so maybe you don't want to get, you don't want to do business with them, because you might end up on the other end and no one likes to be sued like, honestly, it's it if you ever want a better deterrent for doing good business ever want a better deterrent for doing good business.
Speaker 4:Oh, sorry about that, no, it's all good bella, I know you're not featured in this episode.
Speaker 2:I guess you are now. Can you go lay down? Yeah, good girl. What's the pup's?
Speaker 4:name Bella, bella, oh, she's adorable. She's just upset because my wife is at home right now. So she's like I want attention and I just leave everything open for them to run around the house, but they're just sitting right next to me right now.
Speaker 2:I got a two-part question and it'll go in two different directions so you can answer it however you'd like to One.
Speaker 2:So when it came to like Cole and myself and we deal in real estate all day long, this is what we do but when we wanted to learn about it, not only did we read books and listen to podcasts and all the fun stuff, but we also joined like masterminds.
Speaker 2:So my question number one is what was the path and trajectory like to be able to learn and get into this field that you're in right now? So, like for us, we just we lean on each other, we lean on our coaches, we lean on the guidance and the support, but what does that look like from somebody that's coming in from your perspective? And then part two of that question is At what point and what kind of training do you provide for folks that maybe you want to come in on an LP role, or maybe folks that are like, hey, I'm thinking about entering into this partnership. What information is out there for folks to be able to say, hey, it's now time for me to go ahead, call Shane, because stuff is starting to get real and I don't want shit to go sideways.
Speaker 4:Well, surprisingly enough, you don't need a huge amount of training to do what I do. Okay, but there's also a lot that goes into that. So people that are really interested in the work tend to excel. So that's why I say you don't need a huge amount of training. You don't actually need a degree in a certificate in criminal justice to be able to do what I do. It's not a requirement.
Speaker 4:I've met people actually one of the best people I've ever worked with at this her degree was not in criminal justice, it was in pharmaceuticals. So before she used to work for a doc, she used to be like a pharmacy rep at a doctor's office and that's it. She just, she just did pills, um, and she was absolutely great at the thing at the role, because she had really superb analytical skills and was very detailed. So that really helps because she basically left notes, turn on, uh, no, stone unturned. And that's really the thing that comes into it, because that's the investigative part of it, where you're looking in and making sure, hey, there's a whole bunch of stuff here. I need to make sure I'm hitting this point, this point, that point, um, and honestly, the the amount of training it takes for someone to be useful at.
Speaker 4:What I do is about six months before you can start handling kind of more complex cases. There's a lot of different types of things we work on, so sometimes we'll be working on really kind of advanced cases like multifamily syndications or high risk lending situations like multifamily syndications or high risk lending situations, and then we have less intense ones like vendor risk, which usually they're not going to be huge giant cases with a bunch of problem. Usually just it's more. It's more on the market research side. Occasionally we get someone that's actually absolutely crazy and you look into their like like a home builder and their quality of work is just absolutely out there and you have no idea how a home builder gets sued this many times.
Speaker 4:But that helps you build the skills for those cases where that happens in a multi-family syndication or happens in a lending case. So, yeah, there's not actually a lot of pre-training that you need for it, it's just once you get into the job you have to learn so much and you have to learn it on the spot, because I can't teach you every single thing you need to know. There's no, there's no legitimate way for me to do that. I can try, and I definitely do try, but there's no. There's no like secret sauce or something where I can just be like, hey, read this manual and suddenly you'll be able to do this.
Speaker 4:It's a very skillset based thing, and it's something you have to develop and work really hard at and it's something you have to be interested in, because if you don't care, you're not going to be good at this job.
Speaker 3:I know your experience is big with this too. Right, like you've had a lot of experience doing this, so I'm sure you'll see certain things to an average person that would not stick out and you're like, oh wait, wait, wait. I know this is a red flag because of X, y, z or like. I know I need to dive in deeper and I'm sure your experience and, like like you said, your passion for it, drives that home.
Speaker 4:Yes, that is definitely a big part of it. And if you don't have that passion, actually I have a really funny story. I, when I used to work for Fidelity Investments, I used to do their job shadows for the due diligence department. It was kind of funny because one time I had a guy that I actually put to sleep on a job shadow through zoom, because I was just going through my work and that's what you're supposed to do on the job shadow. You're supposed to do like a little presentation showing what you're doing. I was going through it, the guy fell asleep and I was just like, okay, obviously he's not to, because a lot of the times they do job shadows because they wanted a job in the department. But I'm like, obviously this guy's not interested enough to do this because the interest of people they'd be chatting my ear off while I was working. They'd be like, hey, why are you doing that? What's this? How do you do this? Well, if you did find that, what would you do next? So it's a completely different approach.
Speaker 3:I hope you smacked him in the head.
Speaker 2:So I know you got a question. Go ahead. No, no, no. So that was all part one. Then part two to that exact same question that we have from before is at what point do folks feel like it's or what would you recommend for somebody, let's just say, from an LP role or from one of the roles of somebody thinking about entering into a partnership? When does your expertise come into play? Like, is it after we've already started talking about formulating the LLC? Is it after I've already done my personal due diligence on analyzing a market, coming up with trends, making sure that I found operators that I feel like, I know, like and trust, and I'm about ready to sign the subscription agreement? Ppm looks good. Let me call shane and make sure it's all good. Or do I do that beforehand? Like, how does that look?
Speaker 4:um, it depends. So ideally I like to get on as early as possible. Why? Because I don't want you to spend countless hours looking at a deal and then me find something that just kills it right off the bat. That would be. That would be absolutely awful, because your money is timed and you can't get back all that time you used looking at that thing.
Speaker 4:What I usually tell people is, once it passes your initial due diligence checks and we're talking like the very early stage of your due diligence, not like where you're sitting there and you've been working on this for weeks and then suddenly you're like I think I might like this.
Speaker 4:Let's send it over to Shane Once it passes your initial phase of due diligence. Like you do some quick market, you do your quick underwriting and you go, hey, this is something I could be interested in. Then you would send it over to me because, ideally, by the time you get to the point where you're like, hey, I might want to get into this, by the time you get to the point where you're like, hey, I might want to get into this, I'll have a report back to you and you can say, hey, okay, so we've got a risk analysis of this whole thing now. So now I know exactly what I'm getting into. Of course, that's like my kind of fantasy way of doing it.
Speaker 4:Normally what happens is LP will get almost all the way through a deal, be almost to the point where they're supposed to transfer money, and then they'll ask me and I will say, um, that would have been nice to know. First of all because now we have to rush this case out the door. I hate doing that absolutely. It's always a pain to rush a case. Uh, we don't usually miss things when we rush cases, but it does make it a little bit stressful, because I'm the kind of person that if I need to do something, I can sit at my computer for 10 hours and get it done or in some cases, three days and get it done. But it's one of those things where it's just like it's not a good, great way to do it, and if I have that extra time I start thinking of things that I would have never thought about before.
Speaker 4:So I'll be like, oh, you know, what I realized, that I've actually saw something about this company on LinkedIn. Let me go look back up that up real quick and make sure that it's not going to be an issue. Those kind of thoughts don't pop in your head when you're rushing through something.
Speaker 3:That's such a great point and I mean I'm sure that's a big factor. It almost reminds me of, like the conversational argument thing, like never say something when you're angry because you need time to like let it settle. And I feel like the same philosophy on this of just I'm sure you look at so much data and then randomly, like a day later or however much time you're like wait a minute, something just clicks and it just happens. So that's very cool Question for you, kind of thinking, tactical side, and this is specific for people that are just building businesses. Listening to your story going, that's interesting. If I want to start my own thing, how do I do it? So, just in your world, if, like, how did you acquire clients and how did you market what worked for you? And again, just as if somebody is an entrepreneur looking to take the next step in whatever industry they're in, what worked for you?
Speaker 4:Gotcha. Well, I'm going to put a big warning sign on this, because what happened with me I know 100%. This is not going to happen with everyone. I took a service I knew was going to be used in the space and that was not currently being used, because people had actually asked me about doing it while I was working for Fidelity. I'm like that's a huge conflict of interest. I couldn't do that.
Speaker 4:So I knew there was a market for it out here in the private equity space to go and do this kind of work. So I started my business with that in mind and I already had a client by the time I started my business. So it was one of those things where I literally started it to work with them. So what really worked for me was getting on social media Before it was really outside my wheelhouse. It took a while for me to get any traction on it, but I actually started sending DMs with connection requests and not really salesy type stuff, just like hey, this is what I do, introduction type stuff, and then leave the door open for them. And I kept doing it, I kept posting, I kept doing all the stuff I was supposed to do, even when it felt like I was talking to an empty room. I would just keep doing it, and that's really what worked for me, because not only could these people see me talking to them directly through my direct messages and realizing it's a service they could use.
Speaker 4:They also saw me posting consistently, not just about business stuff, but about things that were just going on with my life or things that I was even when it was business stuff how that related to me personally.
Speaker 4:So like if we did something really cool, like I always make a big deal out of it whenever we do something like we did. We created some new report templates recently and I posted it all over everywhere, sent it off to all my clients and I'm like, hey, this is this is what we're doing, and you kind of have to work like that way. Yeah, because if, especially when you're a new entrepreneur and you're sitting there and trying your best, if you're just doing it in the dark, no one's going to realize what you're doing. So you kind of have to be a little bit loud and you have to be a little bit proud about and be like, hey, this is what I did, this, this is awesome, let's go, let's talk about it, let's bring this out to everyone. And it's really difficult to get to that point sometimes, especially if you're more introverted, like I am.
Speaker 2:So good, so many gems just dropped, two that I want to hone in on One practice like you perform, even if it feels like nobody else is watching, you still showed up every single day. You're still making content, you're still being engaged, you're still reaching out, and then, before you know it, you've got traction, you've got a following and you've got a grasp on a whole different clientele or different base that you can be able to move forward and work with. Hats off to you on that one. And so I, just before we get into point number two, I got to ask now talk to me a little bit about what it looks like for the future outlook, for yourself, for your business. Where do you see it going? And then we can dive back into that in a little bit. But I just kind of want to know just give me a full picture, but put some, put some bunny ears on it, put a nice bow on it. Let me know exactly what it looks like now with the clients that you've got.
Speaker 4:Cause we heard from where you started at you came on with one client, now you grew.
Speaker 4:What's what's happening next? Oh, so, right now I have about a lift of around and it's actually bigger than that now Cause I haven't updated really bad at updating my client list consistently. I've got my email list, but I don't always put my client list. But we support around 60 individual investors and around two or three institutional clients, so what that looks like and 60 sounds like a really big number, right, but really that's not the case in this situation. These can be investors that make one deal a year and that's all I help them with. And that's actually what I wanna be there for. I wanna go, I wanna be able to help those investors that only make one deal a year sometimes because they don't have access to what I do on a regular basis, and no one can help them.
Speaker 4:So right now that's what it looks like, and actually this the way I'm doing it right now has been pretty successful. I know there's other stuff I can do, there's all kinds of future paths I can take, but really what I'm thinking about right now is making basically more people like me, and what that would look like on my end is, rather than I hire people on, they do cases for me. I want them to function more like an insurance agent where they would go out and get their own clients. Of course, I'll give them some clients to start with, like ones that don't require that much effort right off the bat so that they don't get overwhelmed. But I want them to go out and form their own relationships and really be there for their clients so that they actually take ownership of them and know that, hey, this is not just a person I'm doing a report for.
Speaker 4:They're a faceless person I've never met. These are people they know and that they want to help, and I always tell people hey, don't call something low risk if you're not going to have a family member invest in it, and that's really what I want to bring to the table. I don't want people to sit there and just have this faceless person that I hired and then suddenly they can never talk to them about reports. They can't get anything out of them. I want them to take ownership of their work and make sure that every time they do a report, it's the best effort they can put forward. It's awesome. It's awesome oh.
Speaker 2:I love it. I'm wondering if it's awesome. I love it. I'm wondering if it's time.
Speaker 3:I think it's time. I was just going to suggest it myself. All right, shane, here's the deal. We're headed into what we call the super six, which is the same questions we ask every single guest, and we're going to see how you do so here we go. What separates top performing entrepreneurs from the rest of the crowd?
Speaker 4:I'm going to say persistency because it doesn't really have anything to do with motivation. A lot of people are super motivated but at some point they just give up on things. I feel like people that have really and you're probably going to laugh at this, but I feel like people that have really niche hobbies sometimes are some of the most persistent people you know, so like if they can take that and point it in the direction of business, they'll be super successful and that's kind of what happened to me.
Speaker 4:I have one of the other super nerdy things about me. I actually play like tabletop RPD Dungeons and Dragons all that super nerdy things about me. I actually play like tabletop rpd dungeons, dragons, all that and I have literally I literally am and I'm still currently making it but I've literally made over a thousand pages of my own rpg work wow, and this was before I ever started my own business. So I'm like you know, if you can do that, if you can sit there and be that persistent, what is stopping you from going out that and that really squashed a lot of my like early oh, who are you to do this? How can you do this? It's like you literally sat there and wrote a thousand pages and the only person that's ever read this so far is your friends. So maybe you can go and do this, Maybe you can be a little bit persistent and keep going, because you've done this consistently for two years. What's stopping you from doing that in a business? And the answer was nothing.
Speaker 2:Dude. I love that, and I'm a D&D fan myself. I love homebrew. But moving forward, next question what is a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 4:This one's funny too. Make sure you eat. I have to put it on my calendar. But you will immediately notice a drop in performance if you are not taking care of yourself. And eating is one of the big things for me, because usually I like to eat with my wife and she wakes up like I wake up at like six, seven in the morning. She doesn't usually wake up to like eight or nine, so there's that little. There's a little couple hours in there where I should be eating and I don't, because I want to eat with her. That's a bad mistake. I can eat something small in the mornings and wait for it, and then you notice the difference in performance in those couple of hours and then at lunchtime we eat together. So it's great.
Speaker 4:But yeah, you want to make sure you take care of yourself, because you will notice a drop in performance when you start, when you stop doing it. A lot of people will say just like grind and grind and grind and grind. And it's like, yeah, when you need to, you need to be grinding. But more than that, when you can take a break, take a break and take care of yourself. Make sure you eat, make sure you don't stare at your computer screen for eight hours at a time. Look up on a wall, go for a walk, I don't care what it is, just make sure you're taking care of yourself, because that mental exhaustion will hit you real quick.
Speaker 3:And then suddenly you're not doing anything you want to do. So good, I can personally attest that eating I'm notoriously bad at eating. Nate can attest to me getting hangry. It's just a problem. It's an overall problem. I just don't eat, so I am, yeah, agreed. What is a piece of advice that you'd give to your younger self if you were starting again?
Speaker 4:Ooh, I actually get a lot of really angry people when I give this answer, but I would just tell my younger self to keep going Because, like, at the end of the day, the stuff that my younger stuff did, even if it was dumb, even if it was kind of silly, even if it wasn't always the best path, that's what led me where I am today. I literally and I told my wife this on our last anniversary too I've literally had dreams where I got to live my life over again. Last anniversary too, I've literally had dreams where I got to live my life over again, and I actually spent the entire time trying not to change things because, one, I wanted to beat my wife again and two, because I wanted to keep going on my path.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, so good. I love it. What is your favorite business book?
Speaker 4:That one's hard because. I actually have a lot of contacts that wrote business books, so I don't think I can give an unbiased opinion there. So I have a ton of clients that I've read their books because they're always just like I want to be supportive, and that's a tough one, that is really tough.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 3:Fair, all right. What is your favorite part of owning your business?
Speaker 4:Honestly, the freedom and just the peace of mind that comes with it, because you always think of like a W-2 job as stable and as someone that kind of worked in like a department where it was kind of well-known what we did but it wasn't well-known enough that everything was super secure all the time. And, being the kind of inquisitive person I am and investigative and looking and talking to people and looking at all the data and seeing how often people just get laid off or just have horrible things happen in their jobs and be not able to do anything about it, that is one of my favorite parts, because now when I'm thinking about how I'm structuring my future business, I'm is this a place where you would want to work? Is this something you would want to do long term? If you did this for the next 80 years, would you be happy? And those are the kind of questions I get to answer and actually implement the changes if I want to, and I don't have to wait for anyone's approval.
Speaker 4:That was one of the big things with me. I was always one of the people that was kind of a busy body, always trying to find better ways to do things, and when you're working under someone else. You have to wait for the approval, even if you know it's going to work and you know it's going to be better long-term. And sometimes it's about convincing people, and I think that's one of the big benefits of it actually is. Sometimes it's about convincing people that your idea is good, and that can be really difficult. But if it's a situation where you're working in the world of anti-fraud and you're like, hey, we need to be doing this because otherwise we open ourselves up to this, and then it has to go through three layers of approval before you start making those changes, well, we just had 30 cases that go off the line without that change and now we are open to issues because we didn't detect them beforehand.
Speaker 2:Final question here what is something new that you've implemented that's helped drive your success in your business?
Speaker 4:This one is going to be really I'm not going to say controversial, because a lot of people know this one, but I've stopped trying to do everything myself. It's one of those things where I had a meeting with someone and he was like you're basically right now with your new business, you're basically a hundred dollar an hour person constantly going off the rails to do $7 an hour tasks, and I was like, oh, that makes sense. I like that. I like that thought process a lot more, because it and it was really true I would try to do everything, and there's just no reason to do everything for yourself when there's so many ways to optimize something or just make it simpler so you don't have to do it so much. And that's one of the things I've really changed, because I used to be one of those guys where it's like, hey, carry everything on your own back and just never ask for help because you can carry it, you're fine. And then changing that to hey, I need to start thinking about what it is I'm actually prioritizing here. Um, and I definitely seen that in my linkedin activity, because I used to be on linkedin an awful lot.
Speaker 4:I wanted to answer every single question I got as soon as I got it, whether it was through messages or comment or something like that and now I'm like okay, I need to prioritize this. First I can set aside time for linkedin and then, if it goes over that time, I'll do it on the next time. Or if I'm answering emails and it's not a high priority email, it's just someone going hey, this is a new offering I have. What do you think of it? That's not a high priority email right off the bat, because a lot of these guys they're already clients. They're just asking for my opinion on the risks of something and they're not like ordering a report. I'm not helping them avoid a bad relationship, they're just asking a question. I'm like, okay, so I'm going to answer this question, but I'm going to answer it tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Right and I think that's great. I think those are really good tactical points, especially for starting and kind of building and hitting that like growth stage. So I think that's fantastic. This has been awesome. I mean, it was cool to hear your story going from initial thought of police officer headed towards the special agent, unfortunately hitting those health issues. But you decided to pivot and decided to make everything work and so going down to PI, private investigator, right, yep, all right, so make sure. Then heading into finance and eventually starting your own thing. And I loved how you described kind of what you do, how you go through the structures, how you kind of vet honesty in a way, and I just think it's so important for what we do and for so many people so they don't get burned. So it's awesome. Appreciate it. Two final questions for you One, any final advice? And two, where can people find you?
Speaker 4:Final advice? That's a good one. Honestly, if you're a new entrepreneur, do not skimp on that market research when you're initially getting out there. Um, my wife kind of has the same thought process as me when it comes to like entrepreneurs. I think she thinks of a lot of great ideas, but what I always tell her is, before you start implementing that and putting a whole bunch of effort into it, go and see if someone's already doing it or do it and can you compete with them, because there are actually people that do what I do but they don't compete with me simply because their price tags are way too high to compete with me.
Speaker 4:I work with individual investors and people that need to do this so frequently that the price tag of a 10K report or whatever they're charging now is just outside of their wheelhouse. There's no way they're going to be able to afford that. Uh, where I come in is, honestly, I can, like, do the same amount of work for a lot less, and the only real difference is they probably have a lot more resources that they can pull on than I do, and I just have my investigative skills and my knowledge of the US court system.
Speaker 2:I love it. And then, where can people find you?
Speaker 4:The best way is probably LinkedIn. I check that more often than anything else. You can also get me through our website, so it's just really easy. It's literally just our name HSRSIcom Got really lucked out there. You'd be surprised how often you don't luck out with websites, but I got that one, so it's good. You can book time through there. You can connect directly to my LinkedIn. There's also links to I think we have links to our X and Facebook profiles. Now, too, there's also links to I think we have links to our x and.
Speaker 4:Facebook profiles now, too. Just got on there. Not a lot of traction yet, but I had a bunch of clients that were on Facebook so I jumped on there even though I was really resistant to it at first, and then I there was actually a securities attorney that I am sort of acquainted with.
Speaker 4:that was like hey, x is really great, I get a lot of clients from there. So I I jumped on there as well. But yeah, no, you can connect with me definitely through LinkedIn, and if you don't do LinkedIn, go to my website. There's a contact email at the very bottom and a phone number, so really easy to get in touch with.
Speaker 2:I love it, shay. This has been amazing dude. I'm so glad that we were able to have the conversation a couple weeks ago that led us to here. Our house is your house, so as you continue to grow, you continue to scale, you're more than welcome back on Forged in Fire For those that are listening, get home safely. Thank you so much for tuning in to Forged in Fire Again. We look forward to having you on the next episodes moving forward For those that are listening. Again, thank you everybody. Take care, we'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire. If you enjoyed today's raw, unfiltered stories, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us bring more real-world insights to entrepreneurs like you. Be sure to join us next time for even more lessons, struggles and breakthroughs on the road to success. Keep forging ahead.